Busy Fingers Make Quilts

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Nancy Thomas Gross Turk was born in Pope County, Illinois 3 September 1873, daughter of Daniel Thomas and Amanda Vandegriff. In 1888, at the age of 15 years, she married William Perry Gross and over a period of 18 years gave birth to seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood.
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If her age in this newspaper article is correct, and she was 80 years old, and she died in 1965 at the age of 92, the undated article would have been written in 1953. It might have appeared in the Poplar Bluff newspaper. Searching for the reporter and photographer, Velma and Al Daniel, might lead to the name of the publication.

Quilt made by Nancy Thomas Gross Turk

This is one of the quilts made by Great Grandmother Nancy. In many places the pieces don’t quite match up and the stitching is rather irregular so it seems that this was probably one of the last quilts she made well into her nineties when her eyesight had become poor and her old hands didn’t work so well. 

An older quilt that Nancy made.

The quilt pictured above is a lot older, maybe from the 1940’s or 1950’s. This was used at our house on South Walnut Street in Belleville, Pennsylvania. I wonder which fabric pieces were donated by her neighbors.

Lee Gross, Nancy, Alice Vandeven & Gerald Gross. 

In the photo above, we see Nancy, second from left, with three of her children: Leander (Lee), Lavona Alice, and Alvin Gerald. This picture might have been taken in Williamsville, Missouri. If someone could give me approximate dates for the cars, I would appreciate it. That would help to give a date for the photo.

Nancy, great-granddaughter, Patricia Vandeven, and grandson, John William Vandeven in Florissant, Missouri

In the summer of 1964, we went to Chicago to attend the annual meeting of the American Veterinary Medical Association. After the convention, we drove to Florissant, Missouri, to visit my father’s relatives: Uncle Gerald, Aunt Eva and Nancy, Daddy’s grandmother. 

I can’t remember hearing her speak when we were there. Maybe she suffered some dementia late in life or maybe she was hard of hearing.

Grave marker in Poplar Bluff City Cemetery, Poplar Bluff, Missouri

Nancy is buried next to her son and daughter-in-law in Poplar Bluff City Cemetery in Poplar Bluff, Butler County, Missouri. Although I only heard him referred to as George, the stone is engraved with the name ‘Alvin G.’. Eva’s maiden name was Middleton.

Fun on Rollerskates!

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Rollerskates!

Here are my brother and sisters: John, Jr. (Bud), Virginia, & Mary Anne Vandeven on Walnut Street in Belleville, Pennsylvania in 1953. Belleville is in the Kishacoquillas Valley in central Pennsylvania.

I love these pictures of my brother and sisters. They look like they’re having so much fun. Our father was the photographer and you can see that he really had an eye for a good picture. He worked long hours and didn’t get to spend much time with his children, so I’m sure they were especially happy to have his undivided attention!

Bud & Virginia on rollerskates.

 

Rollerskating was a fun pastime in those days. We strapped them on to our shoes, tightened them up with the rollerskate key, and then trudged through the gravel driveway to the street. Walnut Street was less than ideal for rollerskating – it was very rough and the section that was level was rather short. For a really fun and exciting experience we toiled up the hill and zoomed back down. The vibration from that rough surface made your feet feel like they would never recover from that pins and needles feeling.

One reason the road surface was, and is still, so rough is that a lot of the ‘traffic’ on the roads in this rural valley is composed of the horse drawn buggies driven by the Amish residents. The horseshoes cause the center of the road to be rutted and pitted, making for a bumpy ride. Another problem were the ‘deposits’ left on the road by the horses. This just added obstacles to the already dangerous trip down the hill. If you got going too fast and attempted to avoid a pile of horse manure, you might have to come to a stop and fall down before hitting a barbed wire fence.

 

Orpha Courtney Martin owned a plot of land

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Orpha Martin

The Indiana Genealogical Society posted a link on Facebook to a collection of online Historical Indiana Plat Maps at the Library of Congress. My mother’s roots are in Indiana so I searched Clay Township and I found the name ‘Orpha Martin’, my 3rd great-grandmother on an 8.33 acre lot in Dillsborough. The map is in a book entitled Atlas of Dearborn County, Indiana, published in Philadelphia in 1875.

Orpha’s husband, Dr. Samuel M. Martin, had died in July of 1874, a year before the book was published. Just a short distance away from Orpha’s property is the land of J.W. Eggleston, her son-in-law, husband of her eldest daughter, Orphena. It must have been a comfort for Orpha to have her family so near.

The atlas is available from the Library of Congress online at https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4093dm.gla00092/?sp=45 (image 45 of 54). There are some engravings of local sights in the atlas including one of the Dearborn Hotel. I can imagine that Orpha saw the hotel often when she went shopping or on Sundays when she went to church, and maybe even visited there and enjoyed a concert or lecture.

Orpha Courtney Martin is buried in the Old Dillsboro Public Cemetery in Dillsboro, Dearborn County, Indiana. Her gravestone says she was born on March 1, 1814 and died on July 22, 1890 (76 yrs, 4 mo, 21 days). Click here for her Find a Grave memorial.

One thing that puzzles me is this: there is an Orpha Martin listed in the 1880 U.S.Census living in Brownstown, Indiana which is about 60 miles west of Dillsboro. This Orpha is a ‘Border’, although she is listed as head of household. To add to the puzzle, there is a death record for Orpha Martin in Jackson County, Indiana where Brownstown is located. This record has the same date of death as her gravestone and gives her age as 75.

In the 1888 Indianapolis City directory there is an Orpha Martin, widow of Samuel, boarding at 309 Lexington Avenue.

So the questions that come to mind: why would she move to Brownstown, 60 miles away from Dillsboro (1880); why would she move to Indianapolis, more than 70 miles away from Brownstown (1888); and why did she move back to Dillsboro where she died in 1890?

My next step is to look for other relatives who I know were living in Indianapolis at that time and see if they were at the same address. That address seems to ring a bell for me. I have gone through the first 38 pages of the 1880 census looking for a name of a known relative in Brownstown, so I need to look beyond page 38 for someone with a familiar name. Maybe I should look for one of her granddaughters.

It is possible that there were two Orpha Martins of the same age living in Indiana at the same time, so I have a challenge before me to figure out this puzzle.

Photo: Findagrave.com letterman1959